Texans' defense targeting Brady

Updated 10:53 pm, Friday, December 7, 2012

HOUSTON — The Patriots have run 883 plays to the Texans' 846 this season, which, at first glance, hardly seems consequential. What's an extra three-point-something snaps per game?

But it has translated into 10 more offensive touchdowns for New England (9-3), the NFL's highest-scoring team. And never mind Houston has held the football on average for 3 1/2 additional minutes each week.

Nobody forces the tempo in the NFL like Tom Brady because nobody's quite like Brady, a three-time Super Bowl champion whom the Texans must contend with Monday night.

“I think the genius behind the whole thing is you don't have an opportunity to disguise what you're doing,” Texans secondary coach Vance Joseph said. “It makes you show your hand first. They've got you so spread out and the quarterback's so bright, he's just sitting there waiting for you to show what you're going to do before he makes his final call.”

Adds coach Gary Kubiak: “They're pushing the snap limit probably as much as anybody right now, and all that's due to (Brady). He gets so many things done so quickly. He's lost a couple players, but you give him whoever and he'll find a way to be successful. That's the mark of a great quarterback.”

The Texans still believe they have a great defense, recent hiccups and a rash of injuries notwithstanding. So what if little-used second-year corner Brandon Harris will frequently be responsible for Brady's top target, Wes Welker, a matchup defensive coordinator Wade Phillips described thusly: “(Welker's) got 92 catches and Harris has (played) about 29 plays (in his career).”

Such is the confidence level in the Houston locker room these days that nobody is conceding a thing to Brady.

“After practice today, I feel good about our game plan,” strong safety Danieal Manning had said Thursday, a note of defiance in his voice. “This is what, 12 games for us now? And this is the most comfortable I've felt about our game plan going in. I like what Wade has drawn up. We've got a great game plan.”

At least Manning can tell his grandchildren he was part of a victory over Brady in Foxborough. He was a rookie in 2006 and not yet a full-time starter when the Super Bowl-bound Bears defeated the Patriots 17-13, intercepting two passes.

Phillips' San Diego defense got the better of Brady in a 41-17 Chargers romp in 2004, but there would also be hell to pay the next time the two crossed paths in 2007, when Phillips was en route to a 13-3 record in his first season as the coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Brady was responsible for one of those three defeats — and it got ugly. He threw for 388 yards and five touchdowns in a 48-27 romp.

Texans inside linebacker Bradie James, then a Cowboy, conceded, “We were rolling, but (Brady) definitely got the better of us. He's a closer. He's been there. He's proven. He's an elite quarterback who can shred a defense,” James said. “That's the one thing about playing Tom Brady. You've always got to (mind your) ‘P's' and ‘Q's' and cross your ‘T's' and dot your ‘I's.'”

In 2006, before any of the current Texans defensive players were on the roster, the Patriots destroyed the Texans 40-7 in Foxborough, Kubiak's worst defeat as a head coach.

But that was then and this is now. It's the Texans who are 11-1 and leading the AFC pack.

“He's Tom Brady ... (but) I like challenges,” said J. J. Watt, the emergent star Texan whom Brady has no doubt spent most of his week thinking about. “I'm a big fan of challenges.”